I once knew a feller, a travelling mate, not bad as fellers go,
He was happiest when he was miserable if ever that could be so,
He'd wake up every mornin' with the world upon his back,
And so for the want of a better name we called him Happy Jack.
If ever you travelled on outback tracks as most us sometimes do,
With anxious eyes on the petrol gauge in the hope it would see you through,
you're a 100 miles from nowhere and eighty still to go,
you'll hear his voice like the crack of doom “The petrol’s gettin’ low”,
And when you're out on the Black Soul flats and you know what some rain can do,
You hope for the best as you head for the west, then you whisper a prayer or two,
And just when you're halfway over and starting to breath again,
You say with sigh and a mournful eye "I think we’re in for rain."
And when on a long and lonely run with nothing in between,
The town you left is away in the past the next one a distant dream,
He'll prick up his ears and listen and then in accents low,
"I don't like the noise she's makin' boss, the diff's about to go."
When you've bumped over corrugations, so deep you could bury a cow,
You say to yourself "It's pretty bad but the worst must be over now."
Then he'll look at you with a woeful look and furrows on his brow,
The last fifty miles on the road they say is "the worst in Australia now."
Oh I wonder where he is today, this travelling mate I had,
Where ever he is it's safe to say "That things are really bad.
If it's not the diff it's something else or the petrol's gettin' low."
it's pounds to peanuts and that's a bet, something's about to go.
